Which way are you going, Mississippi?

I often find it easier to write about topics that piss me off, though maybe harder to write coherently. The world at large really doesn’t need to treat this as an invitation.

Here’s the full text of a proposed amendment to the Mississippi state constitution that will be voted on during Tuesday’s election. (Lest you think I’m leaving something out, here‘s a link to the secretary of state’s site. Click the green checkmark for initiatives.)

Be it Enacted by the People of the State of
Mississippi:

SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of
the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE
ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ:

SECTION 33. Person defined. As used in this
Article III of the state constitution, “The term ‘person’
or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from
the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional
equivalent thereof.”

This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.

This is giving full civil rights status to a single cell. Not only that, but single cells which are totally dependent on a woman’s body. Like some cheesy sci-fi flick, it’s two people in one body!

I’ve often thought that people who resist civil rights laws treat rights as a sort of zero-sum game; like you can’t give rights to one without taking them away from another. I have to congratulate Mississippi lunatics for finding a situation where that’s actually the case. Naturally, they’re choosing to give rights to blastocysts at the expense of women.

Did you know that about half of fertilized ova die? Usually before the woman knows anything about them, she probably just thinks her period was a little off-schedule. Clearly there’s going to have to be lots of investigations to make sure those innocent cells are dying of natural causes and not woman-negligence. I think that last line is misleading ’cause while it wouldn’t take any revenue to implement, that amendment would cost you, Mississippi.

Bah, I meant to actually discuss this thing, but it’s just too absurd. I’ve no doubt it’s just another sally by the forced-birth crowd, those sanctimonious assholes who speak so highly of human life while working so hard to make it miserable. I don’t get them, I can only assume that they’re genuinely concerned about… what, exactly? The suffering of the unborn? I suppose that’s about what they’d say, but it’s insane. Embryos don’t feel anything, they literally can’t.

I just don’t understand the mindset that looks at a collection of cells that might, potentially, grow into a person someday on one hand and a woman with ideas, hopes, desires and fears and concludes that the survival of that collection of cells is more important than the woman’s personhood. What is it about a uterus that some people seem to think they’re all public property?

But getting back on topic, we’ve had a perfectly practical boundary for becoming a person for pretty much all of human history, and that’s birth. It’s even built into the language, we talk about “since the day I was born”, not “since the day my parents had sex”. Why change it now? Need a similar version for clones? Fine, they’ll be people from the day they’re decanted. Was that so hard?